I massively respect a lot of what I'm hearing here. There's a lot of diversity, and polarizing opinions on the matter. Some of which I am learning from by just reading them myself.
-Emotion, which is key, regardless the emotion.
-Mat's trademark not giving a fuck - which is something I personally subscribe to myself. Don't do it for anything but the music, and yourself. Personally, the poverty line is WAY above my head, so I basically have a couple of bootlegged VSTs and a launchkey 25. The bootlegged synths I am not proud of, but you gotta do something. But with those small amount of resources, I can still do quite a bit, especially the more I learn sound design, but I digress.
-Location - That's a good one. It definitely plays a part in my projects, although living in the midwest and not moving is a special kind of hell.
-Those who don't try their hardest to make themselves different - And this is one I'm learning a lot from already. I've seen (very recently, like upon looking at these responses) that trying too hard to be abstract from the rest may be a bit of an interference when it comes to learning the mechanics of music. Thinking about it, it seems that maybe doing a few bootlegs and the like can be an excellent idea to be set off on my way to discovering my own musical style.
I think I'm going to benefit from my time here-
